Challenges - Our Future
“Children, adults, community acceptance”
- Children
There is a low rate of continuity of studies due to the language barrier and employment instability.
Currently, the national average of study continuity to high school in Japan is around 99%. However, statistics show that for children connected to foreign countries, the study continuity rate is only 60%.
The national average dropout rate among the students that enter high school in public schools is 1.27%, while the dropout rate of students that need to learn the Japanese language is over seven times higher, 9.61% in total.
When considering career options after graduating from high school, only 42.2% of students connected to foreign countries continued pursuing their studies in college, against 71.1% of regular Japanese students. Between those who find an occupation after graduating, the national average of non-regular employment is only 4.3%, while among students that need Japanese language support the rate of non-regular employment is 40%, almost 10 times higher than the national average. If considering the foreign-related students that did not go to college nor could find regular employment, the rate is boosted up to 18.2%, against the 6.7% rate of unemployment among regular Japanese students.
<Reference: current situation and issues faced by foreigners that live/reside in Japan, rights of foreigner children to access education and learning guarantee>
→ Therefore, to reassure a place where children may choose the path they want to follow, through tsurumi-nyo, free-school, orientations and next generation education, ABC Japan offers a learning opportunity for students since primary school, teaching Japanese language to newcomer children and giving them the chance to learn about future opportunities.
- Adults
In the past years, the number of foreign residents in Japan has grown continuously, and it is expected to keep growing due to the revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 2019.
In a research conducted in 2019 among foreign residents in Yokohama, the most complained issue was the lack of ability in the Japanese language, and 91.1% of these interviewed foreigners claimed that they do want to learn more Japanese. Aside from Japanese Language courses, at ABC Japan we offer other training courses and general support for foreigners’ lives, physical and mental health.. Furthermore, after the economical and employment instability caused by the dissemination of Covid-19, the number of foreigners interested in taking the preparation course to become electricians rapidly increased.
<Reference: Report on the 2019 research about the Awareness of Foreign Citizens of Yokohama City>
→ ABC Japan offers Japanese Language classes for adults and preparatory courses for Electrician Technical Exams “Dai 2 Shu”, supporting foreigner residents to build a safe and stable life in Japan.
- Community acceptance
Tsurumi hosts the second largest number of foreign residents in Yokohama, and among other immigrant neighborhoods, it has the highest rate of foreigners from South America. Because of that, not only are there many restaurants and shops that offer latin-american typical food and cuisine, but also many events featuring South American culture are being held in Tsurumi. However, there aren’t many opportunities on a day-to-day basis for Japanese and foreigners to interact and meet each other, even though they live in the same neighborhood and share the same spaces.
→ ABC Japan hosts local events, workshops, lectures in schools and colleges, classes of various languages and as an entity, we’re constantly working to integrate foreigners into Japanese society. This way, Japanese people will become more familiar with these new residents and will be able to welcome them to living in Japan.
